One of the challenges teachers face is to provide information in a format that is accessible to interested students.
Over my lifetime, things have changed radically in terms of the technology that we use in our effort to teach.
The down side of that is the technology has changed so radically that older formats are no longer accessible - anyone remember floppy discs?
Given that most 'modern' technological formats are aging out faster than I can keep up, I have decided to spend the rest of my life working within the tried and true - books, magazines (although digital is a new thing that might last for a while.)
Ultimately, writers/teachers need to be aware of the changes, but the bottom line? They need to provide materials that a variety of people can access, and explain the craft in a variety of approaches so processing the *information* can be available to as many people as possible.
One student put it this way: If I don't understand what you are trying to say, just saying the same thing but louder isn't helpful.
While I had always tried to have a number of ways to demonstrate or explain what I was doing, since then I have tried to be aware that different people process information differently and have several ways to demo or explain what I'm trying to convey.
This is actually harder in the written format, in no small part because I'm not there to see when the light goes on in someone's eye and they finally 'get' it. So, when I write, I work really hard to explain things clearly.
For the past few years I have been helped by a friend who is good at grammar and spotting typos, especially now when my brain is full of sinkholes. Although it is getting 'better', I find myself typing up a blog post like this, knowing what I want to say, then when I re-read it I find places where I have doubled a word or left one out. So as I work on the articles for WEFT, my friend says she will alpha read for me and make sure I haven't overlooked an awkward phrase, or lost my words along the way.
I'm seeing a slow but steady growth in new weavers coming into the craft. All want information, answers, and many expect the information to be 'free'. As if instructors don't need to eat, or pay for their internet, etc.
I get it. When I chose to be a weaver I had very little in the way of resources that were 'free'. And at times I could not buy something I needed, or had to forgo workshops, conferences, etc. So I try very hard to keep this blog free. But there are things that I need to be paid for, and my books are a welcome small income, as are the classes I teach on-line. For people who aren't aware, the websites to host classes are not free, and the staff costs for the people running the cameras, doing the editing, including captions, the generation of the class 'handouts', etc., all mount up.
I have a couple dozen video clips uploaded to You Tube, but the quality isn't great in no small part because I didn't have a camera crew, editors, etc. They are what they are and I don't charge for them.
For each class I have online, I personally spent at least 60 (or more) hours writing the class plan, sorting out what examples I needed, what I needed to demonstrate, generate the documentation, then spent hours (days) filming the content, which was then edited and published for the students to use to learn more.
The current article for WEFT has taken up about 30 or more hours (I stopped counting) - and I haven't even finished writing the text yet. Another 10 or so hours to generate the text, then edit, edit, edit, send to my alpha reader, who will likely spend another 3-5 hours going through the article, mark the changes, then I have to clean up the text based on her input and send it all to the 'official' editor. Then all the work in the production of the magazine, with my article and many others. Each of which will have about the same amount of preparation, just to bring the weaving community quality (hopefully) information for people to add to their foundation of knowledge.
I had also been hoping that the president of the US would forget about his obsession with tariffs and wanting to invade my country, but apparently he's been reminded of his threat to 'crush' my country economically. Since I have just last month renewed my ko-fi shop, I will continue to list things for sale there (including a digital book/memoir of my life as a professional/production weaver/teacher), and see what happens with the tariffs. In the meantime, Canadians don't have to pay anything 'extra'.
Lastly, I have been mulling over what I ought to be doing with all the 'samples' I've been weaving to illustrate the WEFT articles. Most samples are large enough that I can cut each one into 9 pieces, then mount them on card stock and sell the packets of samples. If anyone is interested, I will look into doing that once the magazine starts appearing in mailboxes.
And no, they won't be 'free'.
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